5 The Boy Who Never Grew Up

by David Handler

  Cassandra watched her nervously. “It still looks like it’s gonna bite me.”

  “She won’t,” I said. “She just gets a little protective around other women, particularly if there’s a bed nearby. She’s rather partial to my ex-wife.”

  “I hear Merilee dumped ya,” Cassandra said, with keen interest.

  “You hear wrong.”

  The Glenmorangie was over by the minifridge. I poured myself two more fingers of it.

  “Then how come she’s in Fiji and you’re not?”

  “I’m having Scotch, Cassandra,” I said. “May I pour you one?”

  “Yeah, yeah, shewa.”

  “How do you take it?”

  “Ya got any diet Coke?”

  I opened the fridge and poked around inside. “I have.”

  “Just dump half a can in with the Scotch.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”

  “Ya can’t do what, honey?” she wondered.

  “I can’t pour diet Coke on top of fifteen-year-old single malt. I’ll be happy to give you another glass if you—”

  “Nah, nah, nah. Just gimme the diet Coke. Lotsa ice.”

  I gave it to her, lotsa ice. She gulped it down and punctuated it with a loud belch, key of D-minor. She had a number of things going for her, Cassandra Dee did, but class was not one of them. We had last met up when that infamous Marilyn Monroe diary surfaced. The reputable publisher who plunked down $3.5 million on it wanted me to clean it up and annotate it. Cassandra, who was working for the Enquirer then, wanted me to slip it to her. The diary, that is. Just a peek. One teeny peek. I didn’t give her one. I didn’t clean up the diary either—it turned out to be a major hoax.

  I sat in the chair by the bed and sipped my drink. She was still gaping at me, goggle-eyed. Apparently it wasn’t my Floris after all. “My feeding time is two o’clock,” I informed her. “Generally, they toss me some raw meat.”

  “Geez,” she gulped, covering her mouth with her hand. “I was staring, huh?”

  “You were.”

  “It’s just that to us ghosts … I mean, you’re the man with the golden touch. Mister Bestseller. And you’re kinda my idol. And I still can’t believe we’re actually woiking together.”

  “We’re not.”

  “We’re on the same story, ain’t we?”

  “On different sides.”

  “We can still trade, can’t we?”

  “That all depends—what have you got?”

  She crossed her legs and flared her nostrils at me. “Zorch’s detectives found out yesterday that you’d be staying here,” she revealed. “His publicist tipped off the media. That’s how come they were all waiting here for ya.”

  “Is Zorch having me followed?”

  “I could find out for ya,” she offered. “If you’ll tell me who Matthew Wax is dicking.” She leaned forward anxiously.

  “I don’t believe there’s anyone,” I said.

  “I don’t believe that,” she scoffed.

  “You don’t believe that I don’t believe there’s anyone, or you don’t believe there isn’t someone?”

  “Either, both, whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “Ya always talk that way?”

  “What way?”

  She got up and went over to the desk, poked around at my notepads. “Ya don’t got a computer or a fax machine. How do ya function?”

  “I often ask myself the same question.”

  She moved over to the terrace doors, gazed out at the lights of the city. I don’t know if she was more interested in them or in showing me her ass. I do know we both got a fine view.

  “I love it out here,” she declared grandly, nasally, her arms spread wide. “How about you?”

  “I’m just out here to not have a good time.”

  “What I like about movie people is that they’re so genuine.”

  It was my turn to stare. “Genuine?”

  “Yeah, yeah, shewa. Let’s face it, Hoagy, all anybody wants out of life is to reach out and fuck someone. Here, they make no bones about it. They don’t pretend to give a fuck about loyalty or friendship or morality. Money, sex, power—that’s all anybody cares about. Here, they’re honest enough to admit it. I just find that so refreshing. I do, I really do.”

  “Somewhat dark view of mankind, isn’t it?”

  “What, ya don’t agree?”

  “I didn’t say that. I simply said it’s a somewhat dark view.”

  She flopped back down on the bed. Lulu growled at her menacingly. Frightened, she settled for the desk chair. Lulu snuffled happily. She doesn’t find someone who’s afraid of her very often.

  “I meant what I said before,” she said to me, eyeing Lulu warily. “We oughta help each other out. Compare notes, pool information. Bottom line, we both want the same thing out of this.”

  “Which is what, Cassandra?”

  “A bestseller, of course.”

  “If that’s all you’re after, I don’t think you have to worry.”

  “That’s not awl I’m after, honey.”

  “What else do you want?”

  “You really wanna know? Okay, shewa, here it is: I wanna be the biggest, baddest, scariest mother-fucking celebrity biographer there is. I wanna be Kitty Kelley. I want people to shit in their pants when they hear me coming.”

  “That’s not an ambition. That’s a disease.”

  “And you?” she asked tartly. “Whatta you want?”

  “I’m always the last to know.”

  She laughed, a playful shriek that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  I drained my whiskey. I was getting hungry. “Anything else you wanted to share with me?”

  She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “Pennyroyal’s thing with Trace is history. Or will be, soon.”

  “She tell you that?”

  “She didn’t have to.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “Because Trace hasn’t changed his wicked, wicked ways and she ain’t the type to put up with ’em. The man is a heat-seeking missile, twenty-four hours a day. I ain’t kidding—he fucks every woman he meets. Let me give ya a f’r instance—I’m interviewing him down at his love shack in Trancas, see? A real dump, incidentally. Anyways, I’m trying to get some personal insights, that kinda shit, and I’m getting zilch. I mean, he ain’t exactly voibal. All he does is sit there eyeballing my legs. I’m wearing my leather skirt. It’s flattering, okay? I’m not boasting. I’m just painting ya a pictcha, okay? So I excuse myself, go into his powder room and I’m sitting there on the toidy taking a pee and, wham, he comes flying through the bathroom door. Breaks the fucking lock. He’s real upset and apologetic about it, too. Keeps saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just gotta have you. I gotta. Right now. I’m sorry.’ Then he scoops me up off the toidy, carries me into the dining room, and takes me right there on the table. It was unreal,” she recalled, shaking her head. “I came three times.”

  “You didn’t have to tell me that part. In fact, you didn’t have to tell me any of it.”

  “You know he has a name for it?”

  “For what?”

  “His dick. He calls it Big Steve. And he talks to it—just like you talk to your dog.”

  “I don’t think I want to dwell on that one for too long.”

  “Wait, there’s more—afterward, he spilled to me plenty. About her. She’s killing his career. The door to Bedford Falls is shut, nobody else in town’ll hire him. There’s a part he’s desperate for at Panorama in the new Mel Gibson but Schlom won’t even let him on the lot. Hates his guts. Has for years. Anyways, he’s not working and he’s bummed and he hates this whole media hassle with her. He so much as told me it’s over. He likes her fine, but it ain’t like true love or nuttin’. In fact, he thinks she’s a total mess.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Me? I think Penny’s a very sweet person, you wanna know the truth, who happens to be dazed and confused right now. She’s used to Matthew an
d his people making her decisions. She don’t know what hit her. And she don’t know who to turn to. She’d never admit it in a million years, but ya know what she’d happily do right now if she got the chance? You’ll shit when you hear this—”

  “Go back to him,” I stated.

  “How did ya know that?” she wondered, shocked.

  “It’s only natural for her to be having second thoughts. This is an ugly scene. I imagine that whatever life she had before doesn’t look so bad.”

  Cassandra sat back in her chair and glanced out at the view. “Would he ever take her back?” she asked, way too casually.

  At last—the real purpose of her visit. I didn’t answer her right away. I liked watching her work, in a sick sort of way.

  “Hey, c’mon. I shared with you,” she protested.

  “And it was uncommonly generous of you,” I conceded. “All right—I don’t know if he would. He says no. I do know it would be hard for him. There are a lot of wounds that would have to heal. I suppose it’s possible. Stranger things have happened.”

  She was waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t she said, “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I can tell you. You already know much more than I do.”

  “Impressed?” she asked hopefully.

  “I’m not unimpressed.”

  “We’re not so different, y’know,” she pointed out proudly. “We both believe in stretching the envelope. You do it your way, I do it my way. I’m so jazzed. It’s gonna be so great, watching ya in action. This is such a breakthrough for me. It’s gonna be so …” She froze, goggle-eyed. “Geez, I just had a shitty thought—what if they really do patch it up? We’re fucked. Our projects are dead.”

  “Mine goes ahead either way. His book is about his career, not her.”

  “But all the heat’ll go out of it.”

  “Some of it will,” I conceded.

  “Me, I’ll be totally screwed,” she said miserably. “Penny goes back to him, I’ll have zip. The opportunity of a lifetime, right down the toidy.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?” I asked.

  She frowned. “Dunno. Whattaya think it means?”

  “That you’re prepared to play the role of agent provocateur.”

  “The what?”

  “The spoiler.”

  “Hey, no way I’d do that to somebody,” she claimed, deeply offended—or giving a superb imitation of it.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive. I wouldn’t fuck over two people who—”

  “Three, counting Georgie. And then, of course, there’s all of Bedford Falls to consider.”

  “I wouldn’t do it,” she insisted. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Okay, you wouldn’t.” I smiled at her, not believing her for one second.

  She smiled right back at me, knowing I didn’t. “Hey, I thought we could go eat some Japanese. Whattaya say?”

  “I have dinner plans, thanks.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, yeah, shewa.”

  My phone rang. I picked it up.

  “Is this Mr. Hoag? Mr. Stewart Hoag?” A male voice, crisp and businesslike.

  “It is.”

  “Please hold.”

  There was a click. Followed by: “Mr. Hoag? This is Abel Zorch. I wanted to welcome you to town personally.” His voice was smooth and sure. The voice of a seducer.

  “How very kind of you.”

  “I wondered if you’d care to join a few of us for supper this evening. Quite informal. Norbert Schlom is as anxious to meet you as I am.”

  “Love to. Where and when?”

  “Spago. Eight-thirty.”

  “Eight-thirty?” I glanced at Grandfather’s Rolex. “I’ll be there.” I hung up.

  Cassandra looked insulted in spite of herself. “Ya didn’t have no plans at all,” she whined. “Ya were just waiting for a better offer.”

  “And I got one.”

  “Hey, I understand,” she said, turning cheerful. “Business comes first. I’m the same way—ain’t it amazing how alike we are?”

  “Amazing. If you’ll excuse me, Cassandra, I have to dress.”

  She grabbed her jacket and sashayed over and ran her finger along my chin. “You woulda had a lot more fun with me, y’know,” she purred intimately.

  This drew a growl from Lulu.

  “Actually, I’m not expecting to have any fun at all,” I said.

  But I was wrong about that. I had lots of fun. Tons of it.

  Spago sits on a little hill overlooking the giant movie billboards on the Sunset Strip and the twinkling lights of West Hollywood below. It had been the favored celebrity eating spot the last time I was in town. And still was, surprisingly. An ebullient fellow named Wolfgang Puck owns it, and you have to know him, or someone who does, to get a table. Bernard, the French maître d’, greeted me warmly as I made my way through the bar. He did not, happily, hug me. But he did escort me personally to my table. A lot of names were there that evening. The Walter Matthaus, the Michael Caines, Michael and Diandra Douglas. Swifty Lazar was there with that actress who looks like Margot Kidder but isn’t Margot Kidder. Sherry Lansing was there with Henry Kissinger. There was a dusting of literati types—John Gregory Dunne, one of the world’s great gasbags, and his wife, Joan Didion, pound for pound one of its great nontalents. Mostly there was a lot of power there—Mike and Jane Eisner, Mike and Judy Ovitz, the Jeff Katzenbergs, the Peter Gubers, David Geffen, Barry Diller. In place of busboys there were HWA agents hopping from table to table, carrying rumors, confirming rumors, denying rumors. Everybody in the place seemed to be dressed in black, which was very in that season. I rather stood out as I made my way through them in my double-breasted white Italian linen suit, my lavender broadcloth shirt, and my blue silk foulard. But I generally do.

  The table over by the windows was set for five. I was the last to arrive. I was forty-five minutes late—by design. It’s vital to keep movie people waiting for you. If you don’t, they know you need them.

  Abel Zorch jumped to his feet at my arrival, the genial host. “Ah, Mr. Hoag, you made it!” he exclaimed with great pleasure as he pumped my hand. “I’m so pleased. I’ve been so looking forward to this.”

  The Iguana was in his late forties, trimly built, charming, effeminate, cunning, and so oily I half expected to find a puddle forming under his chair. The iguana resemblance was in his eyes, which were hooded, and his complexion, which was deeply tanned and uncommonly reptilian in texture. He was mostly bald. The leathery dome of his skull reminded me of the skin around a ripe avocado. What hair he still had in back he wore long and tied up in a ponytail. He had on a black Armani suit with a black silk shirt and one of the two or three ugliest ties I’d ever seen, iridescent lime green silk adorned with bright orange wedges.

  “Now then, let’s get acquainted, shall we?” he said, rubbing his hands together. “May I present Toy Schlom, Norbert’s lovely wife?”

  “How do you do, Mr. Hoag,” she said, smiling at me radiantly. Cat suits were officially in. Toy’s was black velvet, worn with a diamond choker collar. She was a slender, taut blonde of the Nordic high cheekbone variety, about forty, with slanted, rather exotic violet eyes. She looked like she exercised hard three hours a day and then got rubbed down by a masseuse for two hours more. Her complexion had a strangely smooth, shiny quality, as if she used sandpaper on it and then sealed it over with polyurethane. “My, what a perfectly adorable little dog you have,” she observed, her inflection high-toned Park Avenue, with a hint of Locust Valley lockjaw. She wouldn’t fool a soul in either of those places, but she wasn’t in either of those places.

  “Lulu doesn’t care for that word,” I said, though in fact she wasn’t even listening—too busy rubbernecking at all of the heavy hitters about the place. For a would-be starlet, Spago was heaven.

  “Adorable?” Toy frowned prettily.

  “Dog,” I replied.

  “Oh, I see.” She went back to the smile. “I must tel
l you—I admire Merilee Nash’s work tremendously.”

  “We all do,” Zorch chimed in effusively. “How is—?”

  “Merilee’s fine,” I said, my happy face glued on. “She’s fine. I’m fine. We’re both fine.”

  “So glad to hear it,” said Zorch. “I don’t believe you’ve met my close friend Norbert Schlom.”

  Norbert Schlom nodded sourly and didn’t offer to shake my hand. The president of Panorama was a gruff, thick-necked bull in his early sixties with too little chin, too many jowls, and a thick, loose underlip that was the color of fresh, moist liver. His eyes were yellow and malevolent. The only other time I’d seen eyes like them was when I once saw a Norway rat scrabbling up through a grate on Amsterdam Avenue. Schlom worked at his grooming. His white hair was carefully layered and combed, his stubby fingers manicured, his teeth capped, his pitted face tanned. There was a ten-thousand-dollar Philippe Patek gold watch on his wrist. His gray flannel double-breasted suit looked custom made, as did his white broadcloth shirt. But none of it helped. He still looked like a thug. He was a thug. His first job in show business had been bouncer at a mob-owned strip joint in Detroit. From there he graduated to strong-arming for a Chicago loan shark. Harmon Wright brought him out to L.A. in the midfifties to chauffeur around some of the agency’s unsteadier talent. He moved over to Panorama during a labor dispute and gradually worked his way up from enforcer to hatchet man to mogul. He was a throwback to the old days of Hollywood—an uneducated bully who ruled by intimidation. He and Abel Zorch made an odd pair, but Hollywood is full of just such odd partnerships.

  Rounding out our party was Zorch’s date, a sculpted young male model done up like a harem boy in shirt and trousers of billowing purple silk. His name was Geoffrey, with a G, and he was there to look attractive and to not make a sound.

  “Now please,” Zorch urged me, “do sit.”

  I sat. Lulu didn’t. She hesitated. For one awful moment, I was afraid that she was about to go table-hopping, sucking up to all of those rich, powerful movie people. But she didn’t. She was better raised than that. She curled up under me, content to wait for her opportunity to come to her.

  A waiter appeared at my elbow.

  “We’re sampling a cabernet sauvignon that Wolf keeps here for me,” Zorch informed me. “It’s from my own small winery in the Napa Valley. Would you care to try it?”